Actually, to me, it looks a bit like her mom is a strawberry blonde and her dad has light brown or dirty blonde hair. But I believe it has also been stated that Carla does dye her hair.
I think part of the issue is the fact that we have an unusual problem with the LGBTA supporters among the characters having their activism there running into the activism for the Muslim-coded Bulmeria. Joyce doesn’t care about Bulmeria. It’s not on her radar and she didn’t go down to the protest to do anything other than to save her trans sister from being outed. Carla’s incredibly pro-trans rights billionaire parents (the opposite of Elon) are also apparently all in on Bulmeria arms trafficking with Carla forced to confront the issue. Hank is pro-his queer daughter and anti-Bulmeria (probably because the Book of Cheese says that it’s necessary to bring about the apocalypse).
It’s not a deliberate thing, Dorothy clearly intellectually knows the Bulmeria situation is terrible and protested for all of five seconds. Jocelyne is trans and is absolutely caring about Bulmeria. Asma is apparently queer as well and pro-Bulmeria.
But the story may or may not be setting a Western problems versus Eastern problems one. Possibly with some racial tensions underlying them.
Poor Carla and Joyce must both choose between allying with their family versus growing in greater oppression consciousness.
Although; I will never say the message has been subtle. Especially with lines like “I was heroically gay. I deserve a medal” coming out of the heel of the arc. Or the hilarious Willis quote of “suck it Raidah haters”. Its got all the subtlety of a jackhammer lol
I think at some; if people can’t tell where Willis is leaning in this plotline, they may just have to brush up on their media literacy.
You sure? I kinda feel like Willis’ overarching message – not just in this storyline, but in most of DoA – is “life and the world are complicated and messy. Nothing and no one are just one thing all the time and from every angle, and a big part of growing up – which is, fundamentally, what DoA IS about – is confronting the reality that the simplistic answers and categories we learned to divide reality up into are just that: simplistic. The real world defies easy, neat, one-sided explanations, and people are messy. They’re hardly ever just good or bad, right or wrong, no matter how much you try to force them to be.”
Or maybe I’m just projecting my own distaste for blind partisanship and pat narratives. Yeah, that must be it. “The characters I like are good, and the ones I don’t are bad. The events that remind me of things I disagree with are wrong, and the ones that make me think of things I enjoy are right.” Yes, this must be the real message, after all!
the comic is called DUMBING of Age for a reason. Bunch of college kids being messy, getting into relationships, facreolling through schooling, and dealing with family drama. I actually think a lot of said family drama has been great; especially well handled, given how dark the themes got during the whole kidnapping arc.
I think the added layer of a real world genocide allegory did kind of muddy the waters though. Willis hasn’t exactly handled that with the same level of nuance. Especially when a lot of it is also still tied into the whole controversial Joyce/Dorothy ship.
Also probably because Willis really wanted to put out the Slipshine stuff. That might’ve also played a part in it lol
My take on the subject is Willis never intended the protest to be anything other than a backdrop but now has realized it’s a very cool subject to tackle: which is the growing awareness of politics beyond your immediate area and concerns.
And its throwing a lot of people for a loop because Dorothy and Joyce’s bisexual awakening and Carla’s parents with their trans support are now getting muddied with a larger subject outside of anything normally related to the story.
And there’s no answer for this because none of them can really change anything in Bulmeria.
You are wrong, C.T. Phipps. Your one of my favorite authors by the way. There is some sort of right-wing commentator from It’sWalky! that Willis has been asked about a few years ago if he would show up. Willis confirmed he does exist in the DOA universe. “I know where HE’S at. I know what HE’S doing.” This was shorty after Gash-Face met Amber. I thought Willis meant this guy would show up representing Ryan in court or being a correspondent on it or something. Now I see a new possibility. Being a major player in this political storyline, featuring former congressional representative Robin DeSanto.
I mean, Dumbing of Age itself doesn’t really do “nuance”, and neither did the Walkyverse. Every character Willis has ever written has either been “kind of rude but basically good” or “literally Hitler”. Which is fine! A lot of haters call that a “flaw” but it’s a Scrubs-esque dramedy webcomic and wouldn’t benefit from making, like, Mary into a morally gray antihero or whatever. But it’s not a great precedential framework for a Very Special Episode.
Especially when the inciting incident of the Very Special Episode wasn’t written to be such, because nothing at the protest portrayed Joyce as in the wrong and there were no meaningful consequences from it (the idea that the school newspaper is the only source of information about a major student protest is preposterous), so all your metaphors are scrambled from the jump because they’re not meant to be metaphors.
I feel like there’s a discussion here about the nature of storytelling I’m not quite articulate enough to communicate. Like it’s been very apparent from the start that DoA is a fairly low stakes, slice of life, dramedy. So why is Willis being so heavily scrutinized for telling a story at a protest that’s not about the protest? It was just a narrative choice to justify certain characters being involved and motivate action but it’s turned out to be very polarizing. Is that just subjects to be avoided if you’re inherently trying to present a political message? I personally think you should be able to tell a silly romance drama set in the middle of a protest. Everything is fair game. If people didn’t like it just try harder next time to improve.
Like now we’re debating Carla’s parents and the implications of billionaire morality and war profiteering, but is that really the story Willis planned to tell or is it just fun that Carla has billionaire parents?
I don’t think I’m conveying my ideas well here but I hope someone understands what I’m getting at.
It’s because DoA itself raised the stakes. From murderous fathers to mob justice to war protests.
If social commentary about billionaire funding wasn’t meant to be a part of the plot, then Booster wouldn’t have brought it up to Carla, and Mary wouldn’t have rubbed it in Carla’s face, and Charlie wouldn’t have brought it up again. Note that nobody really cared about Carla having rich parents til it was brought up in the story, but because Willis introduced it, it becomes a topic of discussion.
DoA is considerably lower-stakes compared to the Walkyverse but even it struck out with the reality of vigilante justice in like the first couple years.
Its because its a slice of life low stakes comic and that’s fine. But when you introduce protests and genocide and weapon sales you get significantly less “low stakes”.
The protest didn’t happen it was a writing choice Willis made to have a protest, to introduce the concept of Bulmeria and imply all hes implied about it. But when you introduce that level of weight and stakes you have to deal with that level of stakes.
I guess, in a sense, but the comic has always dealt with larger issues. We had an attempted rape early on. Kidnappings, murders, abusive parents, a homeless lesbian teen, political campaigns. I don’t think protests are really higher stakes than what these kids have already dealt with.
Genocide would be, but they’re only dealing with that abstractly and would be no matter how well Willis handled it. They’re not being genocided. They’re protesting a genocide far away. The stakes for them don’t change.
I may be mistaken, because it’s not a sentiment I share, but I get the impression some people don’t like it when certain sensitive issue are used as background elements in someone else’s story. For example, consider a story focusing on a man’s feelings when the rape of a woman he doesn’t know affects his social circle, particularly if the events surrounding that are integrated into his personal journey of self-actualization. I’m fairly certain many people would find that offensive, because they consider rape to be too serious a subject to be brought up and not centered, especially if it’s the rape of a woman being used in a story about how a man feels. I think some of the readership here is the same way about the Bulmeria situation reading as equivalent to the Palestine situation. To them, brown people being genocided is too serious a matter to use as a background element in the story of two white girls being gay for each other.
Now, personally I think you can use anything as a background element because all actions and events have consequences, and all stories about those consequences are valid. It’s okay for Joyce and Dorothy’s personal journey to get tangled up in a serious protest about a serious issue they don’t really care about, because that’s how things happen in the world sometimes.
Yeah, I honestly think the story has bitten off more than it can chew, topic-wise.
If this is gonna be a story about Carla reckoning with her parents being supportive of her but complicit in other bad things, I’m not too beat up about it. But that’s about the only version that seems clear enough to work into the comic’s flow without derailing a lot of stuff.
Especially when it’s a sort of slice-of-life comic about college kids. Now we have people involved that might actually change the world, like Carla’s parents, and the scale of conflicts might start increasing more.
The cops weren’t just hanging out at the protest coincidentally, they were there because the school called him in advance of the protests. Asma was tear-gassed by her own boss, and that angle hasn’t come up yet at all.
We saw in real time people basically competing over who got to be thrown under the bus first during that last election; and all it did was just result in two communities doing a synchronized roll under the bus together. Fighting fascism takes unity, but fascists are REALLY good at dividing minority groups, and neoliberals are really bad at being allies when it rubs up against money.
Carla’s parents being super supportive of her is wonderful; but its up against the background of the whole genocide stuff. So; like a lot of real life people in the 1%, they can have left leaning positions, and still be totally willing to not have any left for the people they stand to profit in hurting. Doubly so if they actually care about their kids who are LGBTQ+.
Willis; you better not cut away to something else before this conversation becomes super uncomfortable. Gotta let people stew in it! lol
Personally I think it’s a very usual problem. Queerness does not erase whiteness and white queers placing their own interests over that of nonwhite people is a common issue. Often it’s genuine naivety, particularly with younger people. I definitely had a rough education during my early uni days. It’s a big part of the criticism Willis got over the tear gas kiss, and I think it’s pretty suitable for it to be an in-comic topic as well.
Do we really need, have a deficit of coming out narratives where coming out is immediately shamed for White Centrism and Narcissism?
Maybe clueless queers is a story that needs to be told or talking padr people of color.
But in Coming out stories where people are already routinely shamed and ostracized?
I don’t see how thats anything anybody needs. Especially casting people of color as the foil.
How is that not talking past Queer people of color who get this from all sides ?
I think this hits different a year after Trump is elected.
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I think it would help if we knew…a single thing about Bulmeria? How long has this civil war been going on? Why is there a civil war? Are the “civillians” being killed actually violent rebels teying to overthrow a democratically elected government? Is thebgovernment actually a junta conductingvthebusual junta ethnic cleansing? What form of government does Bulmeria even have? Where even *is* Bulmeria (They’re Muslim coded but let’s not forget the biggest Muslim nation in the world isn’t in the Middle East)?
I think there’s actually some interesting things to be said that Joyce had no idea what Bulmeria is about and thus doesn’t care. Dorothy does but probably only a laywoman’s knowledge because it’s not a subject she’s invested in.
Jocelyne knows a lot.
But Joyce doesn’t CARE to learn because she has her own thing going on and is annoyed everyone is distracting her from it.
Joyce knowing nothing about Bulmeria is the most believable part of this whole arc. A first year uni student (a previously home-schooling one at that) who doesn’t know *anything* world events or even her own country’s politics? 100000% believable
Hell, I (attempt to) communicate with full-grown adults in various fora who know nothing of either world events or their own nations’ politics (from Americans who are unaware that Puerto Ricans are American citizens to Brits who don’t quite grasp that Brexit means they’re no longer in the EU to at least three Nigerians who don’t believe racism in America is a big deal). A freshman in college? One who arrived there still in the grip of Evangelical fundamentalism, whose primary goal was to find a husband and learn just enough to home-school her kids? Yeah, I buy that she doesn’t know anything about anything, and is proud of herself when she picks something new up.
This. ‘Why don’t you care about Bulmeria’ rings kinda false when the author doesn’t really seem to care about Bulmeria, and the place is just a nebulous prop to use in this story of privileged American college life. in this case, as a background for Joyce and Dorothy’s self-discovery.
I’d be happy if Willis decided to do some serious world-building, and describe where Bulmeria supposedly is/what all the issues are there in a reasonable amount of detail. I’d also be happy if Willis decides to drop Bulmeria entirely as an aspect of these stories (surely America has enough civil issues of its own that these could now be the primary focus of protests going forward), and I’d also be happy if Willis just rips off the Bulmeria bandage and just starts openly using, say, Israel-Palestine or the Sudanese Civil War. Because right now, for all the supposed ‘seriousness’ of Bulmeria, all it really comes across is a supporting crutch for a cast of mostly privileged Americans (and one Englishman, one Canadianwoman, one Asma and one Sarah (is she really the only main-cast student that a scholarship has been mentioned for?))
@Veronica: I don’t think the details really matter. And giving some details would likely just lead to arguments about what they mean, mostly based on analogy to real conflicts that people already had strong opinions about.
We know enough and we can basically accept Willis’s narrative slant on the conflict without dissecting it the way we might if we had more details. We know it’s a genocide – which strongly implies one ethnic group being targeted. We know the government has access to US weapons. We know US right wing/mainstream media is calling the opposition terrorists. It seems to be an internal conflict, but I don’t think we’ve seen anyone calling it a civil war – which implies a very strong power imbalance.
In theory, without giving the details Willis could pull some kind of twist and have the government of Bulmeria actually be the good guys and the leftie protesters here completely wrong, but we know that’s not going to happen. I don’t see what more details on the conflict actually gives us.
This. We should all be able to agree that y’know, genocide bad, no matter who it’s happening to? There’s unfortunately no shortage of current ongoing war crimes around the world. I think it’s probably best to leave writing about a specific one to stories centered around it. This comic is probably going for a story about sheltered college students discovering what intersectionality is, and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just telling a different story.
It’s pretty safe to assume the side that’s sending snipers and riot cops against a peaceful student protest is the bad one, and extrapolate from there.
“Unusual Problem” is coding for Willis making mystifying editorial decision to Pitt a decades long coming out narrative of the main character against racism.
He knows his audience is babies. And can barely stand proud coming out narratives.
Everyone getting mean and ugly at commenters needs to remember it was deliberate.
People actually defended Mary for transphobia and comments had to be locked.
y’ever read that Discworld book, “Going Postal”? Mr. Pump’s dressing-down of Moist von Lipwig’s “harmless” crimes springs to mind; like, just because he wasn’t an actual murderer and only swindled “guilty” people doesn’t mean he didn’t indirectly drive a lot of innocent people to an early grave
or like… y’know how a lit match is obviously way hotter than an ice sculpture, but the ice sculpture has so much more mass- and thus more overall thermal energy- that there’s no way that match could ever melt it?
like carla’s parents might be vanilla-strawberry sweetie pies who could never bring themselves to harm anyone directly, but just because a person is “harmless” doesn’t mean they’re “good”. and you don’t make a billion dollars by being a good person
Given that the US purchases arms with taxpayers funds, may I say that I resent the seeming implication that every single individual person who has ever paid any form of tax person in this country is worse than Blaine O’Malley?
Oh come on. Obviously, given the context of all the previous comments, I was specifically meaning Carla’s parents and other military contractors not that every single USAmerican is worse than Blaine (who is also American – so would he be worse than himself?).
Next you’ll be saying I said we should be pissing on the poor
If we’re going to classify people as good or bad, yes, you run into problems like everyone who’s born into the US empire is complicit in its crimes. Probably better to reject such concepts as “billionaires are bad people” and think about if the things people do are good or bad, and what they might do to fix the bad.
@amelie at least Americans get to vote, a luxury rarely afforded the citizens of other imperialist regimes across the world. I mean yes you can call it a sham democracy but that’s still better than a very real dictatorship
Agreed, we did personally see the deaths of two people directly by his own hands. Neither he was that shaken up about, and after killing Ross he very quickly figured he oughta kill all witnesses.
I’m not going to rule it out, though I’d note that the two murders we did see him carry out were clownshoes level incompetent. Not necessarily saying they were his first, but fully everything about his conduct screams that he’s a money-washer who thinks he can be a real gangster.
Also, we’re haggling over very small numbers. Any plausible number for Blaine to have killed is a rounding error for people killed with products from a military-industrial company.
I don’t think we actually know exactly what role Ruttech plays. Maybe that’ll come up soon. Maybe it’ll just be glossed over as “arms industry bad”.
I think the most detail we’ve seen is My parents do sell a lot of computer systems to the government. And so probably also — probably — the military.
The “probably” is likely denial, but if the “sell computer systems” part is an accurate summary, it sounds like Ruttech is part of the supply chain, not building the actual missiles or whatever themselves. And also thus not having any say in where they’re sold to.
I’m reminded of Order of the Stick when Elon’s dad turns out to be super supportive and loving until the man revealed the massive Happy Birthday he spelled out with crucified burning prisoners.
i mean, glad they’re happy for her but hopefully it wouldn’t be like “don’t call us if you don’t have any updates” lol
Well, either it’s misleading/disrarming, or they don’t ‘know any better’ somehow and it’s ppl they’ve delegated all the other tasks to that are responsible for the ‘ruttech arming/funding the bulmerian war’ or whatever
OR, maybe they’re human, and have both admirable traits (loving and genuinely supportive parents) and unpleasant ones (are capable of being dismissive/unthinkingly racist towards a nation of people on the other side of the world they’ve never met and not bothered to learn much about).
If we want to explore this more, we can just throw in Danny’s older brother – IIRC he’s in the military, so the story possibilities go quite a few ways:
1) He’s a good elder brother
2) He’s a shit elder brother
A) He’s enlisted and will have pretty bad PTSD on discharge
B) He’s enlisted NCO (say, a sergeant) and MAGA
C) He’s a careerist officer and a neocon
D) He’s a rare leftist/centrist/”apolitical” officer with a conscience (in this comic? HA!)
Oh, if Danny’s brother makes anything more than a cameo there is definitely more possibilities if he a shit brother who’s MAGA. Imagine his response to his brother dating a black girl. What if Ethan somehow was involved in the story? There are so many possible strings to pull.
E) He’s an NCO and developing pretty bad PTSD (see my roommate, a former Army staff sergeant)
F) He’s actually a rather common leftist/apolitical officer who winds up coming to our attention when he’s caught using malicious compliance with orders that aren’t quite illegal (as in the Marine commander who was told to send men into LA, and detailed them to the one single duty permissible under law – guarding a federal building ten miles away from the protests – or the person responsible for detailing the Army troops “marching” in Trump’s birthday parade, who had them walking out of step, not marching, while the “drone operator” carried a drone model over his head), and Danny gets stressed over a possible court martial of his brother.
I’d hope that’s what happened with the parade lol. I mean people were saying “only dictatorships waste time on drilling marching” and like… The Brits, French and even the *Aussies* march so much better…
I only learned about Willis’ work around the time the strips of the third DoA book was first being released. As such, I was not around for the Walkyverse itself and only blitzed through a chunk of it once and tend to forget some details from those strips, such as Joe and Rachel making Ultra Car, the basis character for Carla. Having her parents be palette swaps feels right.
I would’ve killed to have parents that loved and supported me even if they were evil, I just got evil parents who didn’t love me or support me that much. This storyline stresses me out, especially if they do genuinely adore Carla and want what’s best for her. Look at them. They’re not even asking what family she comes from or her race, their first knee jerk reaction was joy, not suspicion or a pursed smile pretending to care. In even marginally wealthy families that’s like finding a unicorn.
(Note: stressing me out is not a bad thing, I’m just worried for Carla!)
I guess we’re supposed to be seeing some flickering on the screen or something? But this really looks to me like Carla’s parents are actually some sort of AI-generated avatars in some sort of Candyland computergame world
They can’t divest from genocide until they escape the Sword Art Online prison they’re trapped in. Or defeat XANA. I cannot decide which one matches the vibe more lol
I just kinda picture amber as like…A wall of muscle. Like she’s not ripped but you probably wouldn’t be able to knock her over super easily. Just super sturdy.
considering the ‘hype’ around them, it’d be weird if they were bad or unintentionally neglectful with carla’s personality overcompansating or so since she speciifcally told becky “unlike everyone else i actually *like* my parents”
@anon – I guess that’s not impossible, but it really seems to go against everything we’ve learned about them and their appearance in this strip (which is admittedly not a huge amount). Even putting aside their personal and financial support of her identity, think of Carla’s story about them making her her own personal, functioning Ultra-Car toy. That seems like a non-trivial investment of time and energy for busy tech CEOs. I think the evidence overwhelmingly supports that they’re loving, supportive parents to Carla.
i guess its kind of funny that carla’s dad is clearly supposed to be an offbrand shortpacked depression beard era joe with glasses but he kind of looks like a genderbent dorothy.
In the bad universe what happens when Carla broaches the war crime question is they drop the kawaii filter to show their actual corporate visage and talk down to Carla.
If we’re keeping it to DOA, i suppose it’s not unlikely to see Mr. Billingsworth on the board…
I wanted to joke that Raidah’s father could be General Counsel for Ruttech (aka the Chief Legal Officer, the company’s highest ranking in-house lawyer) but i guess Raidah would mention it if that were the case. Also sounds more like her father is a more standard “prominent partner in a law firm” kind of laywer. But i digress.
With Jeph having just done a storyline about Ahn’s dad basically being Elon Musk, I’m glad that’s not Carla’s situation too. I really hope they don’t turn into that when the topic turns to the conflict.
Despite the fact that Carla’s dad doesn’t even vaguely resemble how Dave Willis draws himself, for a second I thought Carla’s parents were literally meant to be the real-world Willis family in a Fantastic Four Meet Jack Kirby kind of way.
… if these two human squishmallows have anything to do with war profiteering, I feel fairly confident that it’s because they didn’t read a contract right, and just assumed they were choosing Dr. Strangelove for the next All Employee Family Movie Night.
That’s best case scenario, yeah. But I have known people who were extremely nice, educated and forward thinking who nonetheless still held some shockingly bigoted views about specific minorities or demographics. And the excuses they give could have come right out of a right-wing’s playbook. “The data supports me on this.” “They’re just a burden on society.” “They’re part of an authoritarian/evil regime. They’re the enemy.”
I mean, the most likely bad scenario is “We build stuff for the US government. We don’t control what they do with it.” rather than “Yes, we’re doing direct work for Bulmeria because we support the genocide there.”
Yeah, that’s a bit of nuance (I know. Nuance in a comments section? In this economy??) that many people miss, both in this comic and in real life. Corporations whose output is primarily electronic parts are decried as “war profiteers” because it turns out one of their customers uses those parts to build cruise missiles (like the folks at Lockheed-Martin could assemble a CPU if their lives depended on it). And of course just because a company build weapons doesn’t mean that’s all they do – Boeing builds both missile systems and civilian aircraft, and how is the parts supplier supposed to know what parts go into which product? Do we stop making 767s in order to protest the production of Patriot missile systems?
I mean at some point the argument is that simple. Boeing doesn’t have to make missile systems to be capable of producing civilian and commercial aircraft. The Ruttens don’t have to supply their tech to the US government unless possibly compelled by law. (Are there laws about military contracts) but then you argue well if they don’t do it than someone else will and those someones might be our enemies, then you’re debating the entire military industrial complex and who’s accountable then? And I think that’s the main point is someone has to hold accountability for their involvement in the process especially when they’re owners of a massive corporation directly profiting from enabling conflict.
If the moral argument here is that countries (or maybe just the US?) shouldn’t have militaries or the arms industries that support them, I don’t really know what to say.
Sure, I guess you can make a case for that kind of pacifism, but it’s not going to happen in the real world unless we get some kind of utopian world government.
Once again, it’s nice that Carla’s parents are so supportive of their daughter. But it’s gonna be interesting to see how nice and supportive they are when she asks about the weapons their company makes that fuel genocide and other war crimes.
Carla has identified as Dutch before, so I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. Also, from what we’ve been told, their company sells computer systems that go in weapons, not weapons themselves.
Remind me what exactly we know about her parents? Like I know they are rich and the business that made them rich is somehow tied to the pro government side of the Bulmeria conflict. But like …… how?
Are they a straight up arms manufacturer that is selling to Bulmeria at wholesale because they want a better contract for resources?
Are they a tech company that is cooperating with the government wanting info on their devices?
Are they in oil and running private security to get to their wells?
Are they some chip manufacturer that is still selling to someone that is selling to Bulmeria?
Is their Business not related at all and they just donate money?
Is their support direct? Or is it like we sell to A, that sells to B, that sells to C, that sells to Bulmeria?
Because that would all put a different lens on things.
The Ruttens designed a missile system or more likely those systems use Rutten technology. Every modern weapon is like its own computer in some ways. Microsoft does this as well. Augmented reality, training programs, cloud data services. It could be a ton of stuff. Like every Bulmerian missile could be running the Rutten 11 OS.(I don’t really know how missile systems work) I preferred Rutten 10 honestly Rutt 11 auto ops into AI spyware.
There’s also a lot of Open Source Linux software in embedded systems work today, presumably including military stuff. Are those companies also military contractors. Or the chip manufacturers?
At what point in the chain does it shift from “the military, like a lot of other people, buys our stuff” to “we’re morally part of the military complex”?
If you have direct deals with the government for them to use your data specifically, you might be more directly involved than “they just buy our stuff”.
I consider Ruttech to basically be DoA Microsoft until we get more clarity on it.
Then being roughly equivalent to Microsoft in a conflict roughly equivalent to Palestine is fine if it’s some background fact about a secondary character.
But when Bulmeria conflict and Rutech are a more direct focus I’d like a little more details than vague notions
To be honest, I’d say Micosoft selling computer systems to the government, even including the military, is one of the least shady things about Microsoft.
Yeah, I work in tech and there’s a LOT of weird overlap — basically every commodity supplier of anything technological is going to have potential military overlap, especially if you supply parts for the aviation or automotive industries — to give a trivial example, a vibration-resistant, dustproof microchip or even something as trivial as a cable connector that works at low atmospheric pressure and temperature does not care whether it is installed on an airliner or a cruise missile. As a heavy manufacturer, even , you don’t really get to choose who Digikey or another wholesaler sells a pallet of your parts to, either.
This goes to absurd extremes — you can find a couple of aerospace parts suppliers who will happily do things in their catalogs like “hey, we sell all of the non-classified parts that go on a Tomahawk missile, if you wanted to make YOUR drone/aircraft design really robust and reliable”, complete with the relevant US National Stock Number (many thousands of which are dual-use civilian-and-military components, and many companies choose to make civilian gear with them specifically because retired NATO military folks will have familiarity with ’em. On top of that, many thousands of them are specifically farmed out to be manufactured by more than one supplier specifically so there’s a robust supply chain.).
I’m not “defending” Ruttech, per se, I’m saying “without a fair bit of detail on what exactly they manufacture, it’s not especially possible to determine how war-monger-ish they are as a corporation” and I’m saying also “the whole global military supply chain is FAR more widespread and diverse than you probably think it is”.
We haven’t really gotten information from unbiased sources. If we can trust Carla, they sell computer systems to the government and some of them go to the military. Presumably someone else puts the computer systems in the weapons, and it’s the US government that sends the weapons to Bulmeria, (and presumably also to DoA-equivalent Ukraine and other places). It doesn’t sound like Ruttech supports or sells to Bulmeria directly.
Looks like the parents are channeling Jake the dog in “Adventure Time” with their look of wonderment from Carla’s revelation. He has the exact same expression when he sees something that wows him.
Carla’s parents are adorable- so it kills me that they work for the weapons company that Asma and Jocelyn were protesting against.
They don’t merely work for it, it’s implied they are the founders. Of course they could have rejoice themselves from day to day and just sit on the board or do R&D as CTO and leave the CEO and COO to run it
What I would like is clarification. Are the Rutens war profiteers as so many on this board seem ready to believe or is it more complicated. Perhaps their technological products are so ubiquitous you could never be fully divested unless you want live in the dark ages. Maybe it’s something in between. I reconcile that billionaires are here and not going away. It’s a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. And in this story I’m still more likely to support the Rutens over Musk, but this all remains to be seen.
If your systems are used in smart weapons you’re a war profiteer even if it’s incidental to your main product output. That stuff doesn’t happen by accident, you have to sign contracts and shit.
Gasoline is used to power tanks. Lead is used to make bullets. Etc. Etc. If you care to cast the net that broadly we’re all soaked in blood unless you care to divorce yourself from society and live off the grid.
I’m sort of baffled you think “tech firm that makes contracts with the military” is a particularly broad net. Because that’s pretty specifically what Dot mentioned.
Is Intel a war profiteer? Because their chips are purchased by companies that then use them in tanks, military aircraft, and missiles. How broadly is the net cast?
Sure, but if you are a gasoline company you can still choose whether to accept a major contract to supply gasoline to the military. Tanks will run on gas, but it doesn’t have to be the gas that you sell.
That’s not strictly true. If I order a pallet of, say, Intel EPCQ128 EEPROMs off Digikey, Intel has no earthly idea (or say) in what those get soldered to.
Depending on the specifics of what a given company manufactures, it is at least somewhat possible that a company that makes components intended for general-purpose aerospace or automotive use will have their tech included in military applications through no direct action of their own. This isn’t true of things like serious custom ICs and CPUs and whatnot, flagship tech, but all of those little chips on PCBs that control memory and timings and input/output are potentially bought from multiple suppliers through wholesalers.
Well while you are discussing the morality of weapons production I’ll just be buying up all this gear for my country so it can protect itself from Russia ^^
Yup. As I think I said in an earlier Carla strip, this is a take that’s only really possible from within a superpower, protected by that ludicrous military from any threat of outside attack.
There are absolutely valid critiques about US foreign/military policy and about how lobbying efforts of the big arms companies affect that or about the deals such companies themselves make with other countries, but reducing it down to any involvement with making weapons is evil takes it to absurd lengths.
Yeah, that’s the rub, ain’t it. Sometimes, the big high-tech weapons are pointed in the correct direction, and you can’t stop an imperialist invasion with pretty thoughts and prayers.
What’s that old Klingon proverb? “It takes two to make peace, but only one to declare war.”
It sounds like it’s closer to the “their products are ubiquitous” side of things. They’re a tech company, so they don’t make weapons themselves. Their computer systems go in some weapons, like they do a lot of other things, but unless you’re a strict pacifist, that’s not in itself morally evil. They certainly aren’t the ones deciding what to do with the weapons.
If you think there is a moral case for making weapons then you are right that supporting the production of weapons isn’t necessarily immoral.
But that doesn’t mean all support for the production of weapons is moral. It means it is context dependent.
Now in the case of Ruttech we know that the weapons being produced are being used to commit a genocide… so even if it might be okay for Carla’s parents to contribute to some weapons, it is still definitely immoral to contribute to those particular weapons.
The really ethically frustrating part is when you consider what Da Boy said — in some real-world cases, the exact same governments are supplying the exact same weapons to both “the genocidal state bombing civilians” and, in a separate war, “the smaller democracy trying to hold off an imperialist invasion from a much larger neighbor”.
very quickly taking the award for best parents of the main cast
not that it’s a difficult bar to clear, but I would likely still nominate them even if there were alternatives that weren’t the standard fair for these kids
You can make them as sweet as possible on a personal level. They literally can’t be .01%ers without being objectively horrible people to anyone that works for them, the world at large, and the environment. That’s how 1%+ get there.
I think I was happier to let them be fictional fantasies, like Bruce Wayne or any story where a monarch is both competent, kind, and progressive. Like, changing political environment or not, I just don’t think it’s necessary for this comic to tackle this topic lol. It is… nowhere near as simple as people think it is (not the billionaire thing, you’re right in that they’re all evil, all rich people are. Even the normal rich, I was raised in those circles, it’s basically a bunch of people with money addiction and morals that vanish in pursuit of that drug), but like… the topic about companies investing in war and profiteering, people controlling what companies do, the power of a CEO, the nature of power in general. Those are usually hefty enough for a standalone story on its own, I just don’t have faith it’s even possible to handle it well without it being like the main discussion.
Like I kinda want these kids to go to class damn lol. Let AG fight the mob.
Tldr: I think your point is super valid and if the story does go that way, I won’t complain too much. I think it won’t though since Carla already had ‘rich are evil’ pointed out to her and that might be part of the impetus of this call, and while you and I might understand this fact already, this comic regularly teaches people a LOT and this might be too important a lesson to skimp over. And yes, that was the TLDR.
That’s a super valid take. I have trouble with removing myself from reality in some cases (after being given brain damage by cops, I can’t watch police shows anymore), but I can also look at Bruce Wayne as a decent guy and hate how writers keep trying to make his folks evil, even when it makes sense. I think having them be normal people who are somehow not evil wouldn’t be too far fetched in a setting where Amber can be batman.
I think, sadly, that boat has sailed, since a part of the reason Carla (is hopefully) calling them is that it’s been pointed out to her what’s wrong with rich people. So I wanted to throw my own two cents in… Which probably wasn’t necessary since Willis tends to be pretty understanding of a lot of social issues and uses them well. Mostly, rich people piss me off, even in fiction, and Bruce Wayne only gets a pass from me because I grew up with him risking life, limb and children to protect people.
If they do go that way, we’re gonna need some kind of hand wave at this point, especially with topics like ‘All presidents are war criminals’ being thrown out there. That one actually surprised the hell out of me, until I thought about it. Something like ‘Oh, no, we’re the literal inventors who keep making things, we don’t handle the business side. We’re too valuable to toss but too inept to know what’s being done with our stuff’.
And even that might be too… fantasy, at this point? Elon Musk *pretends* to be that, but in truth most inventor billionaires are just the facebook guy, stealing from the real inventors. And considering how I learned about presidents literally all being war criminals for waaaay too long, and actually appreciate that sort of lesson, it might not be the worst to have this topic tackled for others who aren’t fully aware of the issues?
We may know, and be tired, of the fact that rich people suck, but this comic reaches a wiiiide range of people.
I won’t complain if they do handwave it, but I’d like it if there was some topical lesson in there instead. Especially in this day and age, creators actually speaking out is something I respect way more than neutral creators who don’t want to hurt their brand.
“You’re so nice
You’re not good
You’re not bad
You’re just nice
I’m not good
I’m not nice
I’m just right”
~ The Witch
Nice people are not the same as good people, and being nice and being good are not required for being right about something. It is also possible that there are no good people. Only people who are sometimes right about things, sometimes wrong about things, sometimes do good things, and sometimes do harmful things, that “good people” is a myth that people who do high-volume harm sell to convince the rest of us that “good” and “bad” matter, rather than “harm” and “less harm.”
This comment is about Carla’s parents. This comment is also about some other characters who are not currently onscreen.
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Alright! Ana’s back!
I can see where Carla gets her mean streak from. XD
Welcome back Ana!
not!joe and not!rachel revealed… after all these years
“Mom, dad, are you war criminals?”
“Is it a war crime to provide weapons to the Bulmerian government to defend itself?”
“Does defending itself mean killing thousands of children?”
“oops, sorry, bad connection! You’re breaking up.”
“I can see you making the hissing noises, dad.”
I feel they will preface this with a “oh pumpkin [sadface]”
Aw man, they already have names.
I was hoping for Jo and Raphael.
They’re good names!
Janneke is apparently a Dutch name? Honestly yeah I can see it.
Also with both her parents being blonde, maybe Carla is one too?
There was a patreon bonus strip like 9 years ago that showed Carla was blonde as a child
I believe it’s canon that Carla dyes.
I mean it was a given, that shade of red wouldn’t be natural for most people. Just wasn’t clear what her natural hair colour would be.
I would’ve assumed “attention seeking”
Ah yes, the only reason a person would change their appearance is to seek attention!
While I would normally agree with you, this *is* Carla we are speaking about.
I’d say with Carla it’s more attention deflecting. Focus on what I want you to focus on, not on me being trans.
Which makes me wonder, did she start dying her hair after all the publicity about her coming out and the the law suit?
I thought it was specifically to look more like her favorite character Ultra Car who is red.
What are you talking about? My hair is exactly her shade and used to be even more scarlet in my youth.
For any people.
Billie did say ‘not a natural redhead’ and made joyce freak out about it in aflashback when she was still acting like afundie
She is. She dyes her hair dark red.
Actually, to me, it looks a bit like her mom is a strawberry blonde and her dad has light brown or dirty blonde hair. But I believe it has also been stated that Carla does dye her hair.
The biggest reveal in my time as a fan, and I saw a guy plummet to his death.
Your name seems kinda…Fishy…
😈😈😈
Shh. Anger not the Kuo-Toa.
I think part of the issue is the fact that we have an unusual problem with the LGBTA supporters among the characters having their activism there running into the activism for the Muslim-coded Bulmeria. Joyce doesn’t care about Bulmeria. It’s not on her radar and she didn’t go down to the protest to do anything other than to save her trans sister from being outed. Carla’s incredibly pro-trans rights billionaire parents (the opposite of Elon) are also apparently all in on Bulmeria arms trafficking with Carla forced to confront the issue. Hank is pro-his queer daughter and anti-Bulmeria (probably because the Book of Cheese says that it’s necessary to bring about the apocalypse).
It’s not a deliberate thing, Dorothy clearly intellectually knows the Bulmeria situation is terrible and protested for all of five seconds. Jocelyne is trans and is absolutely caring about Bulmeria. Asma is apparently queer as well and pro-Bulmeria.
But the story may or may not be setting a Western problems versus Eastern problems one. Possibly with some racial tensions underlying them.
Poor Carla and Joyce must both choose between allying with their family versus growing in greater oppression consciousness.
Its certainly…fraught.
Nuance and the comments here are like vampires and sunlight.
Nuance? In DoA? Blasphemy! /s
Although; I will never say the message has been subtle. Especially with lines like “I was heroically gay. I deserve a medal” coming out of the heel of the arc. Or the hilarious Willis quote of “suck it Raidah haters”. Its got all the subtlety of a jackhammer lol
I think at some; if people can’t tell where Willis is leaning in this plotline, they may just have to brush up on their media literacy.
You sure? I kinda feel like Willis’ overarching message – not just in this storyline, but in most of DoA – is “life and the world are complicated and messy. Nothing and no one are just one thing all the time and from every angle, and a big part of growing up – which is, fundamentally, what DoA IS about – is confronting the reality that the simplistic answers and categories we learned to divide reality up into are just that: simplistic. The real world defies easy, neat, one-sided explanations, and people are messy. They’re hardly ever just good or bad, right or wrong, no matter how much you try to force them to be.”
Or maybe I’m just projecting my own distaste for blind partisanship and pat narratives. Yeah, that must be it. “The characters I like are good, and the ones I don’t are bad. The events that remind me of things I disagree with are wrong, and the ones that make me think of things I enjoy are right.” Yes, this must be the real message, after all!
the comic is called DUMBING of Age for a reason. Bunch of college kids being messy, getting into relationships, facreolling through schooling, and dealing with family drama. I actually think a lot of said family drama has been great; especially well handled, given how dark the themes got during the whole kidnapping arc.
I think the added layer of a real world genocide allegory did kind of muddy the waters though. Willis hasn’t exactly handled that with the same level of nuance. Especially when a lot of it is also still tied into the whole controversial Joyce/Dorothy ship.
Also probably because Willis really wanted to put out the Slipshine stuff. That might’ve also played a part in it lol
My take on the subject is Willis never intended the protest to be anything other than a backdrop but now has realized it’s a very cool subject to tackle: which is the growing awareness of politics beyond your immediate area and concerns.
And its throwing a lot of people for a loop because Dorothy and Joyce’s bisexual awakening and Carla’s parents with their trans support are now getting muddied with a larger subject outside of anything normally related to the story.
And there’s no answer for this because none of them can really change anything in Bulmeria.
You are wrong, C.T. Phipps. Your one of my favorite authors by the way. There is some sort of right-wing commentator from It’sWalky! that Willis has been asked about a few years ago if he would show up. Willis confirmed he does exist in the DOA universe. “I know where HE’S at. I know what HE’S doing.” This was shorty after Gash-Face met Amber. I thought Willis meant this guy would show up representing Ryan in court or being a correspondent on it or something. Now I see a new possibility. Being a major player in this political storyline, featuring former congressional representative Robin DeSanto.
Thanks, Morrison! Appreciated!
You’re so welcome!
I mean, Dumbing of Age itself doesn’t really do “nuance”, and neither did the Walkyverse. Every character Willis has ever written has either been “kind of rude but basically good” or “literally Hitler”. Which is fine! A lot of haters call that a “flaw” but it’s a Scrubs-esque dramedy webcomic and wouldn’t benefit from making, like, Mary into a morally gray antihero or whatever. But it’s not a great precedential framework for a Very Special Episode.
Especially when the inciting incident of the Very Special Episode wasn’t written to be such, because nothing at the protest portrayed Joyce as in the wrong and there were no meaningful consequences from it (the idea that the school newspaper is the only source of information about a major student protest is preposterous), so all your metaphors are scrambled from the jump because they’re not meant to be metaphors.
I feel like there’s a discussion here about the nature of storytelling I’m not quite articulate enough to communicate. Like it’s been very apparent from the start that DoA is a fairly low stakes, slice of life, dramedy. So why is Willis being so heavily scrutinized for telling a story at a protest that’s not about the protest? It was just a narrative choice to justify certain characters being involved and motivate action but it’s turned out to be very polarizing. Is that just subjects to be avoided if you’re inherently trying to present a political message? I personally think you should be able to tell a silly romance drama set in the middle of a protest. Everything is fair game. If people didn’t like it just try harder next time to improve.
Like now we’re debating Carla’s parents and the implications of billionaire morality and war profiteering, but is that really the story Willis planned to tell or is it just fun that Carla has billionaire parents?
I don’t think I’m conveying my ideas well here but I hope someone understands what I’m getting at.
It’s because DoA itself raised the stakes. From murderous fathers to mob justice to war protests.
If social commentary about billionaire funding wasn’t meant to be a part of the plot, then Booster wouldn’t have brought it up to Carla, and Mary wouldn’t have rubbed it in Carla’s face, and Charlie wouldn’t have brought it up again. Note that nobody really cared about Carla having rich parents til it was brought up in the story, but because Willis introduced it, it becomes a topic of discussion.
DoA is considerably lower-stakes compared to the Walkyverse but even it struck out with the reality of vigilante justice in like the first couple years.
Its because its a slice of life low stakes comic and that’s fine. But when you introduce protests and genocide and weapon sales you get significantly less “low stakes”.
The protest didn’t happen it was a writing choice Willis made to have a protest, to introduce the concept of Bulmeria and imply all hes implied about it. But when you introduce that level of weight and stakes you have to deal with that level of stakes.
I guess, in a sense, but the comic has always dealt with larger issues. We had an attempted rape early on. Kidnappings, murders, abusive parents, a homeless lesbian teen, political campaigns. I don’t think protests are really higher stakes than what these kids have already dealt with.
Genocide would be, but they’re only dealing with that abstractly and would be no matter how well Willis handled it. They’re not being genocided. They’re protesting a genocide far away. The stakes for them don’t change.
I may be mistaken, because it’s not a sentiment I share, but I get the impression some people don’t like it when certain sensitive issue are used as background elements in someone else’s story. For example, consider a story focusing on a man’s feelings when the rape of a woman he doesn’t know affects his social circle, particularly if the events surrounding that are integrated into his personal journey of self-actualization. I’m fairly certain many people would find that offensive, because they consider rape to be too serious a subject to be brought up and not centered, especially if it’s the rape of a woman being used in a story about how a man feels. I think some of the readership here is the same way about the Bulmeria situation reading as equivalent to the Palestine situation. To them, brown people being genocided is too serious a matter to use as a background element in the story of two white girls being gay for each other.
Now, personally I think you can use anything as a background element because all actions and events have consequences, and all stories about those consequences are valid. It’s okay for Joyce and Dorothy’s personal journey to get tangled up in a serious protest about a serious issue they don’t really care about, because that’s how things happen in the world sometimes.
I find that a remarkably impatient take. How many days have passed since the protest? One?
In comic? 0
In the real world? Months.
I think ‘impatient” isn’t the best word choice given how long the wait has been.
Yeah, I honestly think the story has bitten off more than it can chew, topic-wise.
If this is gonna be a story about Carla reckoning with her parents being supportive of her but complicit in other bad things, I’m not too beat up about it. But that’s about the only version that seems clear enough to work into the comic’s flow without derailing a lot of stuff.
Especially when it’s a sort of slice-of-life comic about college kids. Now we have people involved that might actually change the world, like Carla’s parents, and the scale of conflicts might start increasing more.
The cops weren’t just hanging out at the protest coincidentally, they were there because the school called him in advance of the protests. Asma was tear-gassed by her own boss, and that angle hasn’t come up yet at all.
We saw in real time people basically competing over who got to be thrown under the bus first during that last election; and all it did was just result in two communities doing a synchronized roll under the bus together. Fighting fascism takes unity, but fascists are REALLY good at dividing minority groups, and neoliberals are really bad at being allies when it rubs up against money.
Carla’s parents being super supportive of her is wonderful; but its up against the background of the whole genocide stuff. So; like a lot of real life people in the 1%, they can have left leaning positions, and still be totally willing to not have any left for the people they stand to profit in hurting. Doubly so if they actually care about their kids who are LGBTQ+.
Willis; you better not cut away to something else before this conversation becomes super uncomfortable. Gotta let people stew in it! lol
Personally I think it’s a very usual problem. Queerness does not erase whiteness and white queers placing their own interests over that of nonwhite people is a common issue. Often it’s genuine naivety, particularly with younger people. I definitely had a rough education during my early uni days. It’s a big part of the criticism Willis got over the tear gas kiss, and I think it’s pretty suitable for it to be an in-comic topic as well.
Is it tho?
Do we really need, have a deficit of coming out narratives where coming out is immediately shamed for White Centrism and Narcissism?
Maybe clueless queers is a story that needs to be told or talking padr people of color.
But in Coming out stories where people are already routinely shamed and ostracized?
I don’t see how thats anything anybody needs. Especially casting people of color as the foil.
How is that not talking past Queer people of color who get this from all sides ?
I think this hits different a year after Trump is elected.
.
I think it would help if we knew…a single thing about Bulmeria? How long has this civil war been going on? Why is there a civil war? Are the “civillians” being killed actually violent rebels teying to overthrow a democratically elected government? Is thebgovernment actually a junta conductingvthebusual junta ethnic cleansing? What form of government does Bulmeria even have? Where even *is* Bulmeria (They’re Muslim coded but let’s not forget the biggest Muslim nation in the world isn’t in the Middle East)?
I think there’s actually some interesting things to be said that Joyce had no idea what Bulmeria is about and thus doesn’t care. Dorothy does but probably only a laywoman’s knowledge because it’s not a subject she’s invested in.
Jocelyne knows a lot.
But Joyce doesn’t CARE to learn because she has her own thing going on and is annoyed everyone is distracting her from it.
Joyce knowing nothing about Bulmeria is the most believable part of this whole arc. A first year uni student (a previously home-schooling one at that) who doesn’t know *anything* world events or even her own country’s politics? 100000% believable
Hell, I (attempt to) communicate with full-grown adults in various fora who know nothing of either world events or their own nations’ politics (from Americans who are unaware that Puerto Ricans are American citizens to Brits who don’t quite grasp that Brexit means they’re no longer in the EU to at least three Nigerians who don’t believe racism in America is a big deal). A freshman in college? One who arrived there still in the grip of Evangelical fundamentalism, whose primary goal was to find a husband and learn just enough to home-school her kids? Yeah, I buy that she doesn’t know anything about anything, and is proud of herself when she picks something new up.
I don’t give a crap about learning any Bulmeria details.
Darfur is basically getting fully erased and the news is burying all details.
I have zero responsibility For learning pretend Genocide details during a massive real one.
This. ‘Why don’t you care about Bulmeria’ rings kinda false when the author doesn’t really seem to care about Bulmeria, and the place is just a nebulous prop to use in this story of privileged American college life. in this case, as a background for Joyce and Dorothy’s self-discovery.
I’d be happy if Willis decided to do some serious world-building, and describe where Bulmeria supposedly is/what all the issues are there in a reasonable amount of detail. I’d also be happy if Willis decides to drop Bulmeria entirely as an aspect of these stories (surely America has enough civil issues of its own that these could now be the primary focus of protests going forward), and I’d also be happy if Willis just rips off the Bulmeria bandage and just starts openly using, say, Israel-Palestine or the Sudanese Civil War. Because right now, for all the supposed ‘seriousness’ of Bulmeria, all it really comes across is a supporting crutch for a cast of mostly privileged Americans (and one Englishman, one Canadianwoman, one Asma and one Sarah (is she really the only main-cast student that a scholarship has been mentioned for?))
@Veronica: I don’t think the details really matter. And giving some details would likely just lead to arguments about what they mean, mostly based on analogy to real conflicts that people already had strong opinions about.
We know enough and we can basically accept Willis’s narrative slant on the conflict without dissecting it the way we might if we had more details. We know it’s a genocide – which strongly implies one ethnic group being targeted. We know the government has access to US weapons. We know US right wing/mainstream media is calling the opposition terrorists. It seems to be an internal conflict, but I don’t think we’ve seen anyone calling it a civil war – which implies a very strong power imbalance.
In theory, without giving the details Willis could pull some kind of twist and have the government of Bulmeria actually be the good guys and the leftie protesters here completely wrong, but we know that’s not going to happen. I don’t see what more details on the conflict actually gives us.
This. We should all be able to agree that y’know, genocide bad, no matter who it’s happening to? There’s unfortunately no shortage of current ongoing war crimes around the world. I think it’s probably best to leave writing about a specific one to stories centered around it. This comic is probably going for a story about sheltered college students discovering what intersectionality is, and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just telling a different story.
It’s pretty safe to assume the side that’s sending snipers and riot cops against a peaceful student protest is the bad one, and extrapolate from there.
shit like this is what drove me towards adopting nihilism, morality is just too goddamn subjective
“Unusual Problem” is coding for Willis making mystifying editorial decision to Pitt a decades long coming out narrative of the main character against racism.
He knows his audience is babies. And can barely stand proud coming out narratives.
Everyone getting mean and ugly at commenters needs to remember it was deliberate.
People actually defended Mary for transphobia and comments had to be locked.
Oh no they’re adorable
And destructive more than any of the outright evil parents could be.
Blaine was kinda in deep with the mob… I think if nothing else that puts him as an equal
Blaine was a money-washer for a regional crime syndicate. These two run a major military contractor
These are an order of magnitude apart
Just one order of magnitude?
With how easily he turned to violence and kidnapping I don’t think he was only involved with monetary crimes.
Unless he killed half a million civilians in the last two decades he’s well behind anyone involved with arming the US.
*sighs and waves a lil white flag like a looney toon*
y’ever read that Discworld book, “Going Postal”? Mr. Pump’s dressing-down of Moist von Lipwig’s “harmless” crimes springs to mind; like, just because he wasn’t an actual murderer and only swindled “guilty” people doesn’t mean he didn’t indirectly drive a lot of innocent people to an early grave
or like… y’know how a lit match is obviously way hotter than an ice sculpture, but the ice sculpture has so much more mass- and thus more overall thermal energy- that there’s no way that match could ever melt it?
like carla’s parents might be vanilla-strawberry sweetie pies who could never bring themselves to harm anyone directly, but just because a person is “harmless” doesn’t mean they’re “good”. and you don’t make a billion dollars by being a good person
@Qube: Puts me in mind of a line from one of the Witch’s songs in “Into the Woods”.
You’re so nice –
You’re not good, you’re not bad,
You’re just nice…
Given that the US purchases arms with taxpayers funds, may I say that I resent the seeming implication that every single individual person who has ever paid any form of tax person in this country is worse than Blaine O’Malley?
Oh come on. Obviously, given the context of all the previous comments, I was specifically meaning Carla’s parents and other military contractors not that every single USAmerican is worse than Blaine (who is also American – so would he be worse than himself?).
Next you’ll be saying I said we should be pissing on the poor
“Oh come on. Obviously, […] I was specifically meaning […] that every single USAmerican […] should be pissing on the poor”
-Gotthammer
I’m glad someone got it at least
If we’re going to classify people as good or bad, yes, you run into problems like everyone who’s born into the US empire is complicit in its crimes. Probably better to reject such concepts as “billionaires are bad people” and think about if the things people do are good or bad, and what they might do to fix the bad.
@amelie at least Americans get to vote, a luxury rarely afforded the citizens of other imperialist regimes across the world. I mean yes you can call it a sham democracy but that’s still better than a very real dictatorship
Or to put it another way, who is more complicit -the citizens that are able to vote or the ones who cannot?
He was a literal murderer, let’s not forget.
Agreed, we did personally see the deaths of two people directly by his own hands. Neither he was that shaken up about, and after killing Ross he very quickly figured he oughta kill all witnesses.
I’m not going to rule it out, though I’d note that the two murders we did see him carry out were clownshoes level incompetent. Not necessarily saying they were his first, but fully everything about his conduct screams that he’s a money-washer who thinks he can be a real gangster.
Also, we’re haggling over very small numbers. Any plausible number for Blaine to have killed is a rounding error for people killed with products from a military-industrial company.
I don’t think we actually know exactly what role Ruttech plays. Maybe that’ll come up soon. Maybe it’ll just be glossed over as “arms industry bad”.
I think the most detail we’ve seen is My parents do sell a lot of computer systems to the government. And so probably also — probably — the military.
The “probably” is likely denial, but if the “sell computer systems” part is an accurate summary, it sounds like Ruttech is part of the supply chain, not building the actual missiles or whatever themselves. And also thus not having any say in where they’re sold to.
I’m reminded of Order of the Stick when Elon’s dad turns out to be super supportive and loving until the man revealed the massive Happy Birthday he spelled out with crucified burning prisoners.
Spoilers! 😀
(nah, it’s cool, I understood that reference)
i mean, glad they’re happy for her but hopefully it wouldn’t be like “don’t call us if you don’t have any updates” lol
Well, either it’s misleading/disrarming, or they don’t ‘know any better’ somehow and it’s ppl they’ve delegated all the other tasks to that are responsible for the ‘ruttech arming/funding the bulmerian war’ or whatever
OR, maybe they’re human, and have both admirable traits (loving and genuinely supportive parents) and unpleasant ones (are capable of being dismissive/unthinkingly racist towards a nation of people on the other side of the world they’ve never met and not bothered to learn much about).
Just a thought.
A lot of actual people in all stations of life are like that!
If we want to explore this more, we can just throw in Danny’s older brother – IIRC he’s in the military, so the story possibilities go quite a few ways:
1) He’s a good elder brother
2) He’s a shit elder brother
A) He’s enlisted and will have pretty bad PTSD on discharge
B) He’s enlisted NCO (say, a sergeant) and MAGA
C) He’s a careerist officer and a neocon
D) He’s a rare leftist/centrist/”apolitical” officer with a conscience (in this comic? HA!)
and so on so firth
Oh, if Danny’s brother makes anything more than a cameo there is definitely more possibilities if he a shit brother who’s MAGA. Imagine his response to his brother dating a black girl. What if Ethan somehow was involved in the story? There are so many possible strings to pull.
E) He’s an NCO and developing pretty bad PTSD (see my roommate, a former Army staff sergeant)
F) He’s actually a rather common leftist/apolitical officer who winds up coming to our attention when he’s caught using malicious compliance with orders that aren’t quite illegal (as in the Marine commander who was told to send men into LA, and detailed them to the one single duty permissible under law – guarding a federal building ten miles away from the protests – or the person responsible for detailing the Army troops “marching” in Trump’s birthday parade, who had them walking out of step, not marching, while the “drone operator” carried a drone model over his head), and Danny gets stressed over a possible court martial of his brother.
I’d hope that’s what happened with the parade lol. I mean people were saying “only dictatorships waste time on drilling marching” and like… The Brits, French and even the *Aussies* march so much better…
Oh, trust me, I live near a base and I’ve seen how the soldier march when they want to. That was strictly malicious compliance.
hahhaha careful now
they may put on a great affect but mind you they’re most likely JUST like any other IRL billionaire 👀
They really are just palette swapped Joe and Rachel, huh
I only learned about Willis’ work around the time the strips of the third DoA book was first being released. As such, I was not around for the Walkyverse itself and only blitzed through a chunk of it once and tend to forget some details from those strips, such as Joe and Rachel making Ultra Car, the basis character for Carla. Having her parents be palette swaps feels right.
The rare good* parents.
Interpersonally, just fantastic. Let us perhaps not investigate further.
I would’ve killed to have parents that loved and supported me even if they were evil, I just got evil parents who didn’t love me or support me that much. This storyline stresses me out, especially if they do genuinely adore Carla and want what’s best for her. Look at them. They’re not even asking what family she comes from or her race, their first knee jerk reaction was joy, not suspicion or a pursed smile pretending to care. In even marginally wealthy families that’s like finding a unicorn.
(Note: stressing me out is not a bad thing, I’m just worried for Carla!)
As far as ‘billionaires’ go lol
It’s like funhouse mirror Joe and Rachel. Jon and Rachelle
Great Value Joe and Rachel
I’ve only had the Ruttens for 3 panels but if anyting happened to them I’d kill everyone else in the comic and then myself.
Starting with the Bulmerians.
Can we just have like, fifty strips of the Ruttens being adorable and also entangling with the topic of their wealth in a healthy way?
Like it’s amazing how much three panels of them have felt like a breath of fresh air from the last couple months.
Maybe weave in a bit of Sarah storylines with Joe and Tony, otherwise I’m fine with leaving the rest of the current storylines for a bit.
Whatever else. They love their daughter.
Which is likely gonna make the next few comics hurt even more
Billionaire CEO parents that pick up for their kid immediately? Like, that happens?
Well, this IS fiction, after all. I mean, Bruce Wayne does that, too.
I guess we’re supposed to be seeing some flickering on the screen or something? But this really looks to me like Carla’s parents are actually some sort of AI-generated avatars in some sort of Candyland computergame world
Okay phew I was wondering why Carla’s dad was translucent
They can’t divest from genocide until they escape the Sword Art Online prison they’re trapped in. Or defeat XANA. I cannot decide which one matches the vibe more lol
The translucence lines aren’t consistent. I think it’s supposed to be in the monitor. My monitor is doing that. Drives me nuts.
The stars and sparkles in the last panel are actually emotes really appearing on the screen.
They are *exactly* as I imagined them.
oh god I immediately love her folks WILLIS DO NOT MESS THIS UP FOR ME
Such an adorable reaction! 😍 The follwoing conversation is going to be a real gut punch. 😔
https://imgchest.com/p/bp45mrmzny5 (Slightly NSFW?)
Late Night Amber drawing.
the way you draw buff women is so perfect. this is a woman who regularly throws people.
I just kinda picture amber as like…A wall of muscle. Like she’s not ripped but you probably wouldn’t be able to knock her over super easily. Just super sturdy.
Right, like God Of War’s Thor. He’s not a bodybuilder. He’s a brute.
Nice 👍🏽
Amber! Where is your other hand?
Her crotch, usually.
fantastic as always Yotomoe
If that’s supposed to be right now, needs more bandages.
well this is quite cute!
I knew they were good parents. I was not expecting them to be adorable, as well.
considering the ‘hype’ around them, it’d be weird if they were bad or unintentionally neglectful with carla’s personality overcompansating or so since she speciifcally told becky “unlike everyone else i actually *like* my parents”
I mean they fought a million-dollar lawsuit to get Carla’s gender identity recognized. That’s not nothing on paper alone.
@anon – I guess that’s not impossible, but it really seems to go against everything we’ve learned about them and their appearance in this strip (which is admittedly not a huge amount). Even putting aside their personal and financial support of her identity, think of Carla’s story about them making her her own personal, functioning Ultra-Car toy. That seems like a non-trivial investment of time and energy for busy tech CEOs. I think the evidence overwhelmingly supports that they’re loving, supportive parents to Carla.
@anon – Sorry, I misread your comment and now I feel dumb. Basically, I agree with you.
he knew he had to make them adorable so it’s the ultimate gut punch when they don’t immediately do what we all want them to 🙁
i guess its kind of funny that carla’s dad is clearly supposed to be an offbrand shortpacked depression beard era joe with glasses but he kind of looks like a genderbent dorothy.
This actually makes sense given how much Carla has been looking like Dorothy recently. It really hit me in yesterday’s strip in the profile view.
So, who called AIs?
AIs?
I think some people are unfamiliar with excessive cutesy video filters on video call apps lol
The world’s most adorable enablers of genocide!
Carla’s parents are time traveling Older Danny and Dorothy/Joyce’s magic tech baby from the future.
If this was the Marvelverse, Carla would be an Inhuman and her parents were makers of Sentinels.
Ruttech: “I guess we doin displays now”
I can see where Carla’s natural hair came from— Janneke? DUTCH?!?
Rutten is a dutch name according to google
Carla claimed to be skating in the halls to celebrate a Dutch holiday in one strip.
They’re a very festive people!
yeah this is me bursting into tears thanks. fuck
Carla: “also, do you remember that travel to Bulmeria you both promised? Well, it’s a long history…”
also for all the people correctly identifying that the Ruttens are adorable, Carla herself is very cute in this strip for just so many reasons
Didn’t Willis say at some point that Mary has actually nice parents despite being, Mary?
And Carla, despite being a (performative) asshole, has two cinnamon rolls as parents.
Next it’ll be revealed that Malaya’s parents are trying to achieve world peace.
Mike also had nice parents.
very funny titling a strip about a trans girl “pumpkin” lmao
Hahahaha. Oh Well done Willis!
And here I thought she was going to ask them to turn her back into a car! Silly me….
Carla is Trans, but is she manual transmission or automatic transmission?
Am
this was also my thought.
Portation
Aww, these two are precious! No WAY are they going to be awful peo-Oh wait right they are supplying war machines
Do tech billionaires have beards?
Yes – see steve jobs, sundar pichai (google), Larry Ellison (oracle) and if you want an engineer, wozniak is not a billionaire but he has a beard…
You know, I had quite a few visions on how these two would be. Cute was not one of them.
In the bad universe what happens when Carla broaches the war crime question is they drop the kawaii filter to show their actual corporate visage and talk down to Carla.
And we see their board meeting with the Dangs and Ms. Chatham from QC.
If we’re keeping it to DOA, i suppose it’s not unlikely to see Mr. Billingsworth on the board…
I wanted to joke that Raidah’s father could be General Counsel for Ruttech (aka the Chief Legal Officer, the company’s highest ranking in-house lawyer) but i guess Raidah would mention it if that were the case. Also sounds more like her father is a more standard “prominent partner in a law firm” kind of laywer. But i digress.
I don’t know about head lawyer but we do already know about one of their lawyers: Harrison, jacob’s brother
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/ding/
I think in Harrison’s case he’s one of their lawyers for the trans case but he works for them personally as opposed to being an employee of Ruttech
Somewhere Becky is shouting, “KHHHAAAAAANNN!!!” (only it’s “ROSSSS!!!!”)
With Jeph having just done a storyline about Ahn’s dad basically being Elon Musk, I’m glad that’s not Carla’s situation too. I really hope they don’t turn into that when the topic turns to the conflict.
Sometimes good people are also bad people.
That’s not even an effect from their stream or the comic. They can just do that.
The fact that those sparkles are diagetically on screen is making me lose it.
I spent so long trying to work out if they were diegetic or not.
Who was it who said, “I always look up ‘eclectic’?” I forget, but I always look up “diegetic.” This time I got contradictory answers.
Apple’s FaceTime can do things like that, so surely Ruttech can do it better!
Oh no…….urge to trust….must suppress…urge to trust!
Don’t trust billionaires, even if they are supportive of their trans daughters.
Now that’s just good advice right there.
Carla’s hot.
Dad.
Carla’s hot dad.
Are you Taffy’s dad?
We may facilitate war crimes/genocide but never let it be said that we’re *not* supportive!
Despite the fact that Carla’s dad doesn’t even vaguely resemble how Dave Willis draws himself, for a second I thought Carla’s parents were literally meant to be the real-world Willis family in a Fantastic Four Meet Jack Kirby kind of way.
… if these two human squishmallows have anything to do with war profiteering, I feel fairly confident that it’s because they didn’t read a contract right, and just assumed they were choosing Dr. Strangelove for the next All Employee Family Movie Night.
That’s best case scenario, yeah. But I have known people who were extremely nice, educated and forward thinking who nonetheless still held some shockingly bigoted views about specific minorities or demographics. And the excuses they give could have come right out of a right-wing’s playbook. “The data supports me on this.” “They’re just a burden on society.” “They’re part of an authoritarian/evil regime. They’re the enemy.”
I mean, the most likely bad scenario is “We build stuff for the US government. We don’t control what they do with it.” rather than “Yes, we’re doing direct work for Bulmeria because we support the genocide there.”
Yeah, that’s a bit of nuance (I know. Nuance in a comments section? In this economy??) that many people miss, both in this comic and in real life. Corporations whose output is primarily electronic parts are decried as “war profiteers” because it turns out one of their customers uses those parts to build cruise missiles (like the folks at Lockheed-Martin could assemble a CPU if their lives depended on it). And of course just because a company build weapons doesn’t mean that’s all they do – Boeing builds both missile systems and civilian aircraft, and how is the parts supplier supposed to know what parts go into which product? Do we stop making 767s in order to protest the production of Patriot missile systems?
I mean at some point the argument is that simple. Boeing doesn’t have to make missile systems to be capable of producing civilian and commercial aircraft. The Ruttens don’t have to supply their tech to the US government unless possibly compelled by law. (Are there laws about military contracts) but then you argue well if they don’t do it than someone else will and those someones might be our enemies, then you’re debating the entire military industrial complex and who’s accountable then? And I think that’s the main point is someone has to hold accountability for their involvement in the process especially when they’re owners of a massive corporation directly profiting from enabling conflict.
If the moral argument here is that countries (or maybe just the US?) shouldn’t have militaries or the arms industries that support them, I don’t really know what to say.
Sure, I guess you can make a case for that kind of pacifism, but it’s not going to happen in the real world unless we get some kind of utopian world government.
Why do her parents seem so…precious?
Ooooooooooh!! SO Kawaaaaaaaai!!!
So precious parents!!
Εmil and Janneke – I already know I will love them forever! 😀
Once again, it’s nice that Carla’s parents are so supportive of their daughter. But it’s gonna be interesting to see how nice and supportive they are when she asks about the weapons their company makes that fuel genocide and other war crimes.
The impression I got was more that their technology was used by weapons manufacturers, not that they were themselves manufacturing weapons.
Looks like their company makes the computer systems that the weapons run on. Which still isn’t good.
I knew Carla has dutch roots but given her parent’s names, is she like a second generation immigrant?
Oh so now we’re also going to address European tech founders setting up shop in the USA because EU regulations bad lol
I want to find out. I dated a daughter of Dutch immigrants when I was very young.
“I have a girlfriend” (woooh)
“….she think you guys selling to whattheirname is bad” (ah.)
Oooh! New characters!!
Wow you almost manage to make those billionaires look human /j
“It’s a trick. Get an axe.”
Awww, they’re so happy for her!
For some reason her dad makes me think of Absolute Lex Luthor XD So wholesome with so much potential drama in the background.
“Pumpkin” is sweet and Emil is saying that genuinely.
And Janneke is very cute. Now I wonder what freckles would look like on Carla.
live your truth!!! sending more weapons to israel at this minute!!!
As a Flemish person, either Yaay, more Flemish people. Or either Boo, the Dutch!
…
Could also be South-African maybe.
If Afrikaner let’s throw potential apartheid collusion in the past to the mix, that will end well , sure.
I mean they work in a company that supplies and manufactures weapons, so yeah.
Carla has identified as Dutch before, so I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. Also, from what we’ve been told, their company sells computer systems that go in weapons, not weapons themselves.
Nou, zeg.
Remind me what exactly we know about her parents? Like I know they are rich and the business that made them rich is somehow tied to the pro government side of the Bulmeria conflict. But like …… how?
Are they a straight up arms manufacturer that is selling to Bulmeria at wholesale because they want a better contract for resources?
Are they a tech company that is cooperating with the government wanting info on their devices?
Are they in oil and running private security to get to their wells?
Are they some chip manufacturer that is still selling to someone that is selling to Bulmeria?
Is their Business not related at all and they just donate money?
Is their support direct? Or is it like we sell to A, that sells to B, that sells to C, that sells to Bulmeria?
Because that would all put a different lens on things.
They’re not a weapons developer but they are a tech company that makes parts used in weapons. They’re a contractor and supplier.
Mary said it here.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/kerning/
The Ruttens designed a missile system or more likely those systems use Rutten technology. Every modern weapon is like its own computer in some ways. Microsoft does this as well. Augmented reality, training programs, cloud data services. It could be a ton of stuff. Like every Bulmerian missile could be running the Rutten 11 OS.(I don’t really know how missile systems work) I preferred Rutten 10 honestly Rutt 11 auto ops into AI spyware.
There’s also a lot of Open Source Linux software in embedded systems work today, presumably including military stuff. Are those companies also military contractors. Or the chip manufacturers?
At what point in the chain does it shift from “the military, like a lot of other people, buys our stuff” to “we’re morally part of the military complex”?
If you have direct deals with the government for them to use your data specifically, you might be more directly involved than “they just buy our stuff”.
I consider Ruttech to basically be DoA Microsoft until we get more clarity on it.
Then being roughly equivalent to Microsoft in a conflict roughly equivalent to Palestine is fine if it’s some background fact about a secondary character.
But when Bulmeria conflict and Rutech are a more direct focus I’d like a little more details than vague notions
To be honest, I’d say Micosoft selling computer systems to the government, even including the military, is one of the least shady things about Microsoft.
Yeah, I work in tech and there’s a LOT of weird overlap — basically every commodity supplier of anything technological is going to have potential military overlap, especially if you supply parts for the aviation or automotive industries — to give a trivial example, a vibration-resistant, dustproof microchip or even something as trivial as a cable connector that works at low atmospheric pressure and temperature does not care whether it is installed on an airliner or a cruise missile. As a heavy manufacturer, even , you don’t really get to choose who Digikey or another wholesaler sells a pallet of your parts to, either.
This goes to absurd extremes — you can find a couple of aerospace parts suppliers who will happily do things in their catalogs like “hey, we sell all of the non-classified parts that go on a Tomahawk missile, if you wanted to make YOUR drone/aircraft design really robust and reliable”, complete with the relevant US National Stock Number (many thousands of which are dual-use civilian-and-military components, and many companies choose to make civilian gear with them specifically because retired NATO military folks will have familiarity with ’em. On top of that, many thousands of them are specifically farmed out to be manufactured by more than one supplier specifically so there’s a robust supply chain.).
I’m not “defending” Ruttech, per se, I’m saying “without a fair bit of detail on what exactly they manufacture, it’s not especially possible to determine how war-monger-ish they are as a corporation” and I’m saying also “the whole global military supply chain is FAR more widespread and diverse than you probably think it is”.
We haven’t really gotten information from unbiased sources. If we can trust Carla, they sell computer systems to the government and some of them go to the military. Presumably someone else puts the computer systems in the weapons, and it’s the US government that sends the weapons to Bulmeria, (and presumably also to DoA-equivalent Ukraine and other places). It doesn’t sound like Ruttech supports or sells to Bulmeria directly.
Forgot to add supporting strip with Carla talking to Charlie about it.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/true/
Awww, cutest war profiteers, so supportive.
Looks like the parents are channeling Jake the dog in “Adventure Time” with their look of wonderment from Carla’s revelation. He has the exact same expression when he sees something that wows him.
Carla’s parents are adorable- so it kills me that they work for the weapons company that Asma and Jocelyn were protesting against.
They don’t merely work for it, it’s implied they are the founders. Of course they could have rejoice themselves from day to day and just sit on the board or do R&D as CTO and leave the CEO and COO to run it
What I would like is clarification. Are the Rutens war profiteers as so many on this board seem ready to believe or is it more complicated. Perhaps their technological products are so ubiquitous you could never be fully divested unless you want live in the dark ages. Maybe it’s something in between. I reconcile that billionaires are here and not going away. It’s a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. And in this story I’m still more likely to support the Rutens over Musk, but this all remains to be seen.
If your systems are used in smart weapons you’re a war profiteer even if it’s incidental to your main product output. That stuff doesn’t happen by accident, you have to sign contracts and shit.
Gasoline is used to power tanks. Lead is used to make bullets. Etc. Etc. If you care to cast the net that broadly we’re all soaked in blood unless you care to divorce yourself from society and live off the grid.
I’m sort of baffled you think “tech firm that makes contracts with the military” is a particularly broad net. Because that’s pretty specifically what Dot mentioned.
Is Intel a war profiteer? Because their chips are purchased by companies that then use them in tanks, military aircraft, and missiles. How broadly is the net cast?
Yes lol
Come on, this is, like, basic. Intel has been targeted by BDS in the past for its associations with the Israeli government and military!
YES????
lmfao what a wild question.
Sure, but if you are a gasoline company you can still choose whether to accept a major contract to supply gasoline to the military. Tanks will run on gas, but it doesn’t have to be the gas that you sell.
“War profiteer” is a specific crime. It’s not just any company with ties to weapons manufacturing.
That’s not strictly true. If I order a pallet of, say, Intel EPCQ128 EEPROMs off Digikey, Intel has no earthly idea (or say) in what those get soldered to.
Depending on the specifics of what a given company manufactures, it is at least somewhat possible that a company that makes components intended for general-purpose aerospace or automotive use will have their tech included in military applications through no direct action of their own. This isn’t true of things like serious custom ICs and CPUs and whatnot, flagship tech, but all of those little chips on PCBs that control memory and timings and input/output are potentially bought from multiple suppliers through wholesalers.
Well while you are discussing the morality of weapons production I’ll just be buying up all this gear for my country so it can protect itself from Russia ^^
Yeah, fuck Russia. Ridiculous country.
Yup. As I think I said in an earlier Carla strip, this is a take that’s only really possible from within a superpower, protected by that ludicrous military from any threat of outside attack.
There are absolutely valid critiques about US foreign/military policy and about how lobbying efforts of the big arms companies affect that or about the deals such companies themselves make with other countries, but reducing it down to any involvement with making weapons is evil takes it to absurd lengths.
Yeah, that’s the rub, ain’t it. Sometimes, the big high-tech weapons are pointed in the correct direction, and you can’t stop an imperialist invasion with pretty thoughts and prayers.
What’s that old Klingon proverb? “It takes two to make peace, but only one to declare war.”
It sounds like it’s closer to the “their products are ubiquitous” side of things. They’re a tech company, so they don’t make weapons themselves. Their computer systems go in some weapons, like they do a lot of other things, but unless you’re a strict pacifist, that’s not in itself morally evil. They certainly aren’t the ones deciding what to do with the weapons.
If you think there is a moral case for making weapons then you are right that supporting the production of weapons isn’t necessarily immoral.
But that doesn’t mean all support for the production of weapons is moral. It means it is context dependent.
Now in the case of Ruttech we know that the weapons being produced are being used to commit a genocide… so even if it might be okay for Carla’s parents to contribute to some weapons, it is still definitely immoral to contribute to those particular weapons.
The really ethically frustrating part is when you consider what Da Boy said — in some real-world cases, the exact same governments are supplying the exact same weapons to both “the genocidal state bombing civilians” and, in a separate war, “the smaller democracy trying to hold off an imperialist invasion from a much larger neighbor”.
Awwwwwww
I REALLY love the trope of the cartoonishly evil villains who genuinely love their family and are supremely good parents.
very quickly taking the award for best parents of the main cast
not that it’s a difficult bar to clear, but I would likely still nominate them even if there were alternatives that weren’t the standard fair for these kids
Dina’s parents have a hefty lead on these two, still.
~♫thank you for reminding me there’s actually good parents here that I forgot♫~
I think I’d still nominate these two but that’s personal bias now at least
Dorothy’s parents seem to be relatively decent too.
Mike’s as well
Sierra’s dad seems pretty cool.
You can make them as sweet as possible on a personal level. They literally can’t be .01%ers without being objectively horrible people to anyone that works for them, the world at large, and the environment. That’s how 1%+ get there.
I think I was happier to let them be fictional fantasies, like Bruce Wayne or any story where a monarch is both competent, kind, and progressive. Like, changing political environment or not, I just don’t think it’s necessary for this comic to tackle this topic lol. It is… nowhere near as simple as people think it is (not the billionaire thing, you’re right in that they’re all evil, all rich people are. Even the normal rich, I was raised in those circles, it’s basically a bunch of people with money addiction and morals that vanish in pursuit of that drug), but like… the topic about companies investing in war and profiteering, people controlling what companies do, the power of a CEO, the nature of power in general. Those are usually hefty enough for a standalone story on its own, I just don’t have faith it’s even possible to handle it well without it being like the main discussion.
Like I kinda want these kids to go to class damn lol. Let AG fight the mob.
Tldr: I think your point is super valid and if the story does go that way, I won’t complain too much. I think it won’t though since Carla already had ‘rich are evil’ pointed out to her and that might be part of the impetus of this call, and while you and I might understand this fact already, this comic regularly teaches people a LOT and this might be too important a lesson to skimp over. And yes, that was the TLDR.
That’s a super valid take. I have trouble with removing myself from reality in some cases (after being given brain damage by cops, I can’t watch police shows anymore), but I can also look at Bruce Wayne as a decent guy and hate how writers keep trying to make his folks evil, even when it makes sense. I think having them be normal people who are somehow not evil wouldn’t be too far fetched in a setting where Amber can be batman.
I think, sadly, that boat has sailed, since a part of the reason Carla (is hopefully) calling them is that it’s been pointed out to her what’s wrong with rich people. So I wanted to throw my own two cents in… Which probably wasn’t necessary since Willis tends to be pretty understanding of a lot of social issues and uses them well. Mostly, rich people piss me off, even in fiction, and Bruce Wayne only gets a pass from me because I grew up with him risking life, limb and children to protect people.
If they do go that way, we’re gonna need some kind of hand wave at this point, especially with topics like ‘All presidents are war criminals’ being thrown out there. That one actually surprised the hell out of me, until I thought about it. Something like ‘Oh, no, we’re the literal inventors who keep making things, we don’t handle the business side. We’re too valuable to toss but too inept to know what’s being done with our stuff’.
And even that might be too… fantasy, at this point? Elon Musk *pretends* to be that, but in truth most inventor billionaires are just the facebook guy, stealing from the real inventors. And considering how I learned about presidents literally all being war criminals for waaaay too long, and actually appreciate that sort of lesson, it might not be the worst to have this topic tackled for others who aren’t fully aware of the issues?
We may know, and be tired, of the fact that rich people suck, but this comic reaches a wiiiide range of people.
I won’t complain if they do handwave it, but I’d like it if there was some topical lesson in there instead. Especially in this day and age, creators actually speaking out is something I respect way more than neutral creators who don’t want to hurt their brand.
Carla looks just like her father.:-)
“You’re so nice
You’re not good
You’re not bad
You’re just nice
I’m not good
I’m not nice
I’m just right”
~ The Witch
Nice people are not the same as good people, and being nice and being good are not required for being right about something. It is also possible that there are no good people. Only people who are sometimes right about things, sometimes wrong about things, sometimes do good things, and sometimes do harmful things, that “good people” is a myth that people who do high-volume harm sell to convince the rest of us that “good” and “bad” matter, rather than “harm” and “less harm.”
This comment is about Carla’s parents. This comment is also about some other characters who are not currently onscreen.
Aw! Carla’s parents are adorable!✨
Let’s see how they handle the upcoming confrontation :/
Oh thank goodness they seem to be not awful. Hopefully that holds true going forward too
Is no one going to acknowledge that you can practically hear that last panel (or at least I can).
Heh, thems be Dutch names in the tags XD
Am I high or can we see the background through them?